


you like it here, you've got to stay

by boxerzayn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: 19/21, Angst, Drinking, M/M, Pining Zayn, a lil triangle drama to turn up the angst, i talk about flowers and the sky ALOT in this be prepared, otherwise mostly fluffy h/l, sorry!!!!, that's the best age after 17/19 innit, zourry drama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-03 05:12:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1066164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxerzayn/pseuds/boxerzayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>zayn loves louis, louis loves harry, and harry loves fruit and russian novels</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

> title from the kooks' "oh laa", my fave song ever probably!! credit for poem in the beginning for tumblr user alonesomnes, love her!!
> 
> thanks to u all enjoyed writing this too much it's very personal to me

 

> _❝ no time to explain_   
>  _only time to touch_   
>  _let the train make the ground shake_   
>  _let our knees buckle us in_   
>  _so that we’re safe for impact_   
>  _give me your hands_   
>  _let us join them in song_   
>  _the train is passing over_   
>  _this place like a comet_   
>  _no time to talk, no time at all_   
>  _we’re already late_   
>  _come closer_   
>  _come closer_   
>  _the god in me_   
>  _wants to touch the god in you❞_

///

_very classic rock, mick jagger lookalike, if it weren’t for the pink lips and the apple eyes and apple cheeks. fingers made for peeling off orange skin and for pressing against my ribs. sand skin, torso not really broad but long, and big feet. would look good in long coats and shoes of wool and velvet and mocha._

louis sighs, puts down the small notebook he keeps scribbled down things about things in his pocket. there are four stops until he’s supposed to get off but he’s gonna step off on the one after this and arrive late to liam and danielle’s with a fruit basket and a flower.

it’s early june and the sun is softly and warmly kissing the faces of the people wandering he streets the bus drives by. everyone seems happy today, a little drunkly celebrating the summer. even the leaves on the trees look drunk, louis thinks, as he passes them— all full of water and wine, bursting of colour and hanging off the branches like it’s two am and they feel warm and drousy and high on a little weed.

louis is looking forward to celebrating june tonight, too, actually. the past few months has been full of writing on his novel and not leaving the apartment, missing the moment when the flowers sprout through the dirt. he hasn’t been sad, not really, and not heartbroken either, just sort of stuck in the bubble of melancholy limbo of a thoughful, lonely writer.  
“next stop, holmes chapel,” says the voice through speaker, and louis stands up. time to meet fruit boy. 

the sky is white in patches, like someone has dusted off the white powder coating the blue field but not completely. louis thinks about all the little suns in his body. they tingle at just the thought of his fruit boy. (not his, just his the way you sometimes think a library-book is yours for a while because you feel such  fierce and surprising love for it and you think you can have it forever)

“hii,” says harry, as louis comes up to the small fruit stand. the land between them feels too far, louis thinks, while he tells the boy “hello”. he thinks about all the atoms between him and harry standing behind all the bright fruits swelling second by second in their baskets, bathing in sun, and how all of those atoms are closer to harry than he is.  

“where you off to?” harry asks, rockstar voice but eyes tingeling like quietly green candles glowing.

“danielle and liam's,” louis says over the stand of fruit, “tought i’d get some fruit before, ’s all. ” 

he buys three clementines, three apples, and a box of strawberries. _it is after all summer now, and they’re in season,_ harry tells him. _but you can always have some clementines, too,_ and louis understands this because of harry’s skin-peeling fingers.

he wanders to liam's apartment with a thousand suns burning inside his body. seems that if you’d look inside him he’d look orange the way your fingers do when you press them against a torch and all the blood is lit up. he smiles to strangers, and it doesn’t really make him bitter when they don’t smile back. it seems as if here, on the cobblestone roads of holmes chapel, he is alive. back in his apartment a bus ride from here his stained sheets and dirty coffee cups look far too much like props for an indie movie about a writer.

he feels alive and it’s because of the burning suns, and he prays that they won’t die when he looses harry. he wishes that all he needs to be happy is in his own body.

outside the brick building flowers are still blooming a little tiredly. the summer has barely arrived yet, he wants to say, you gotta hang in there a few months more. “’s alright,” the flowers seem to reply. “the sun is shining, remember?” and then liam opens the door from upstairs.

the apartment is clean but smells faintly of cigarette smoke. it’s zayn who greets him at the door first. 

“louis!” he says, hugs him tightly, all bony angles and stray stubbles. 

“mate” louis just breathes, as if he has forgotten to speak normally these past weeks of loneliness.

they eat sushi on the balcony all four. liam and danielle are looking at each other fondly, so _liam and danielle,_ all small secret smiles and her slender hand steady on his. they have that sort of love that louis doesn’t really want anyways — that kind that is so secure and no thrill. 

being in love must feel like having a cold blade pressed against your throat and you must want to push into it, blood everywhere, but worth it. now he can’t possibly know how they feel in their bodies, but you can see that kind of thing, can’t you?

louis sometimes wishes liam was with someone tinier. someone a bit more like a broken feather and less like a full blooming eagle. they’re happy and all so of course he is too, but he still secretly thinks liam would look prettier with someone more sweet-crisp, less in control. danielle’s a _dancer,_ see, all firm-smooth and body fitting against liam’s like a shield rather than deadly like the blade of a knife. 

“lovely makizushi, innit?” zayn says, smiling through the food. louis nodds and looks out over the patio. the sun is almost setting, warmly shining through his bottle of beer and making it look almost like fire. 

zayn lights a cigarette, offers one to louis. “yeah,” louis says, and danielle looks disturbed. she doesn’t know that it’s zayn’s constant smoking that puts the grey clouds on the skys in november.

///

there’s sweat covering all of his body, touching him in the dips of his hips and inbwetween his ribs. lights are flashing around him, and before he falls asleep, all he can think about is that he wishes it was harry’s sweat instead—

///

louis wakes up from sun gliding in through his apartment. the window is open, a light breeze tousling around the light yellow curtains. the smoke and blood red wine seems to have fallen asleep with him, still softly resting in his veins. 

“morning,” zayn says from behind him, white t-shirt straining against his shoulders and hanging off his ribcage. 

“hey,” louis murmurs, voice not really holding. “crazy night, huh?” 

zayn smiles, a lazy smile all stray hair and sugar-coated teeth. “yeah, you smell like shit.” then he giggles, and if louis weren’t so tired and stuck in the hazy sadness of his flat maybe he’d tickle him. 

“you stink too,” louis is about to say, even though zayn doesn’t. it’s like, when others reek of smoke zayn smells of it like it’s the ooze of a magic potion sipping out from his skin— 

“i love you,” zayn says, too soft for here, causing louis’ skin to crinkle. 

“i love you, too.” he says, because he _does._ loves him the way he loves the clouds and the cobblestone roads. not in his mouth but in his bones, behind the flesh. 

“do you wanna sleep some more?” zayn says, changing subject and laying down again. they’re in the sofa, must be other people in the apartment too, louis thinks, all the beer bottles and cigarettes on the floor and between the cushions. 

“yeah,” louis says, and they drift to sleep again, louis dreaming about fruit and harry and mindlessly wandering through the city with wine colouring his body purple from the inside.

///

“how’s your novel going?” harry asks, as they’re walking down the road. he’s still in his working clothes, blue t-shirt and seller-cap. it's the beggining of july already and it’s lovely to be able to walk outside, with arms out like this. theirs are swining back and forward, harry’s stardust skin and louis’ dirt skin sliding against one another like ice bergs.

“got a bit of writers block, for the moment,” louis explaines. “seems that when i’m home alone for weeks, sad and unhealthy and just rubbish as a person, i can write it all out. but other times i’m too busy living what i could be writing, you know?”

“yeah,” harry says slowly. louis wonders if he does that thing with his lips intentionally. 

“what’s the best book you’ve ever read?” harry says then, as they sit down on a bench outside a house with grand pink flowers. 

“on the road.” louis says quickly. then, as the quiet, kind big sister of his answer, he quotes his favourite line of the book.

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing,“— harry’s sushi coloured eyes are widening now— _“but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”_

“hmm.” he says, nudging louis arm like, good job. “that’s the most famous part of the whole book, unoriginal…” 

“so pretentious,” louis says, feels the suns in his body crackle like the balls of fire they are—

“boys and girls in america have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.” 

“god, _harry,_ ” louis says, and then he kisses harry on his bloodstain-red mouth, his plague infected mouth, morning bird mouth, amaryllis mouth, his agatha cristie poison mouth— and there are no fireworks and there’s no champagne but has louis ever been this happy and alive, he will never know, too full of the taste of harry’s fruit mouth. 

 ///

louis wakes up and doesn’t know who he is. the lamp is still on, throwing a yellow glow over the room, but outside the sky has soaked up all light, dark dark dark. alcohol is buzzing in his mind and the apartment is cold. is it even his apartment? who bought those flowers? 

words are sprouting from his fingers _they’re going to waste they’re going to waste_ — he sits up, stumbles across the room. 

he finds his dark brown leather book, the one with the scribbled down words inside, and slouched over the dirty kitchen counter, he writes and writes and writes. 

///

“giuseppe arcimboldo.” louis says.

“who’s that?” harry touches louis' thigh. 

“painter. the one who made the portraits made of fruit. we should go see his art some day.” 

harry nodds, all nympfy lurkyness and sushi eyes happy. “italy, right?”

///

they fuck the first time that night; harry finally presses his fingers into louis’ skin. he wonders why he can’t just pry open his ribcage with his orange-peeling fingers then and there, bend apart the ribs and cut holes in his lungs and drink the juice from his leaking flesh. would be orange blood everywhere, but wouldn’t it be glorious?

louis shudders at how apart-picked he is, lying here in his own bed, chest ripped open, worn inside out, no longer a safe haven for his heart to rest.

they lay still then, harry slowly drifting into sleep and louis counting the orange and pink stripes on the sky and watching the wind catch hold of his yellow curtains. 

///

_september in italy is green-brown. terre vert. all pasta, oil, red wine. full of broken things, buildings, statues, roads, people — tanned, crinkly women, none apologising of being broken._

_the pavement is cracked and warm and i feel fuzzy in my whole body being here, like maybe i belong. harry says i’m being unoriginal and i probably am. loving rome._

louis puts down the sooty pen, describing italy is hard. maybe it’s like how he told harry all those weeks ago — either you can write down what you’re feeling or you just have to feel it, have to live it, have to let it pump through your veins and then die.

harry’s sunglasses are halfway down his shiny nose. the sun is high among the clouds and it’s september in rome, all soft greens and beiges seeming to shine through their skins.

“where’d you get the money for this, harry?” he asks, and the name tastes salty and good on his tongue, like a tasty cracker. 

“oh, you know…” he spaces off, apple cheeks smiling in the nice weather. “think i’m gonna go get us some champagne.”

“in the bright day?” louis asks, laughs. this is being alive alive alive. this is dancing with the blade of the knife.

///

“so how was italy?” liam says, sucking on a cigarette. danielle’s out of town this week.

“was great!” louis says, and he can almost feel nialls smile hitting his left cheek. 

“we’re so happy for you, honestly, that harry kid’s a good kid.”

“yeah,” louis breathes, the smoke getting caught in the air around the four of them. “yeah,” and the smoke ringles upwards. 

“was the art good?” zayn asks, of course.

“yes. not so fruity, though, those fruit paintings, somehow. a bit like the rest of rome, i suppose, all brown and green.”

zayn smiles, and louis looks at the hairs growing thick down his cheeks. looks like a full-blown man, suddenly.

“now if we cans top talking about art-” niall says, nicking liam’s and louis’ cigarettes, sticking them up his nostrils. “let’s get fucking pissed!”


	2. 2.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> zayns fingers wander down his cheek to his scrappy lip, wonders if his mouth is more blade than wound maybe. thinks about how dangerous it would be to press it against louis’.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's part two sorry about the angst my loves

 

> _you smell like a flower that is neither alive nor dead,_
> 
> _because no one has changed its water for weeks._
> 
> _you have a sleepy smell, like when you wake up in the_
> 
> _morning and you’ve been dreaming too long._
> 
>  
> 
> _— Legături bolnăvicioase_

///

zayn looks out over the floor, louis twirling under harrys long arms like they’re having a circus performance for just the two of them. zayn drinks some orange beer and touches his cheek with the cold hand, where the stubble seems to grow on his cheeks like weeds these days.

 

louis looks lovely in the warm light of the party, the rays yellow and and long like on a dusty overgrown field in the summer. they don’t say anything, but they smile at each other and zayn stares at louis' mouth, and it looks like a small amaryllis on his face, like one of those you get for christmas. all the other people’s mouths look sad and like wars on their faces, a stain of blood splashed across their faces or like someone’s cut a line through their skin, blunt knife blades making wounds wounds wounds. 

zayns fingers wander down his cheek to his scrappy lip, wonders if his mouth is more blade than wound maybe. thinks about how dangerous it would be to press it against louis’. 

when he walks out into the darkness later that night, the november night is hugging him tight with its cold body. last week louis finished writing on his book. he doesn’t know if harry had already read the copy, high-hat, greasy reader as he is. but now it’s lying on zayn’s bedroom floor warm and inviting and zayn can’t wait to get home. the train back to macclesfield is loud. there's is dirt on the insides of the window. 

zayns apartment is him in a little box, more than he probably understands. the dark, long, raspy curtains blowing in the wind when the windows are open, look like his swaying strands of almost grey hair in the mornings. the posters hanging in his kitchen have parts of him that are more _him_ than himself, cells stuck to the greasy paper older than the ones in his body now.

there’s two of the stones and one beatles, classic and colourful and experienced posters. louis gave them to him on his sixteenth birthday, a year after they’d become friends. 

it’s funny that zayn hated louis and the way he’d be all clingy and pretty, and as the years have been growing into their skin it’s like he’s been growing into louis. can feel the bloody cave walls of louis’ chest around him and has since he was what, seventeen? but there’s harry now, pushing and shoving at him from beneath, and louis’ chest is an unsafe place to be.

///

 in december louis and harry actually tell people that they’re together. 

“he’s mine.” louis says, “actually _mine,_ not just to borrow,” and his voice is so sweet you could practically knock on it and crack apart the crystallised sugar.

 zayn smiles, a wry, faint smile, seflish. feels common and everlasting, this tug of pain. _it’s how it is,_ he keeps thinking, _this is how it goes_. their invisible feather wings brushing against each other in the winter wind and zayns feeling like they’re on fire.

when louis gets his every-winter-flu, zayn brings him soup as usual but even though louis says “thank you, love,” his ocean eyes are all warm water and all _harry_.

the cushions and sheets of louis’ bed are so soft and familiar under zayns body, crispy white and olive green, and always more of a home to zayn than his own apartment. not so much anymore, maybe, with all the harry-toothbrushes and t-shirts everywhere around here. 

looks too tidy nowadays, too, like louis has shaped up and maybe started doing yoga and stretching and things. maybe it’s the fact that harry’s taller that makes him bend.

it makes zayn sick, all this too much thinking. he needs to focus on his paintings and his hair and all the other things in his goddamn life that aren’t running, as if on a treadmill, away from his best friends relationship.

and it’s not like louis hasn’t had girlfriends before, ( _that was before you were in love with him_ his mind sings), but when he was with eleanor it was so much easier. they were nineteen and elle was all bird eyes and bird mouth and kind laugh and zayn actually liked her, liked the way she made louis soften. not melt like a piece of floating tanned copper on the floor.

///

“how’s harry?” niall asks, taking a bite of his burger. zayn looks at him and silently thanks god for this creature. 

“good,” louis says, shrugs. “he’s been reading _lolita_ again, though, such a weirdo.”

they laugh, louis giggling like a schoolgirl getting to talk about her crush. 

“creepy book,” zayn says, shaking his head in sync with louis. 

niall keeps chewing, finding litterature something very un-interesting. “he should come, some day. haven’t met the bloke properly in months!”

“we’re spending new years at josh’s, tell’im to come,” he continues.

louis’ face twitches, “actually,-“ (there's silence then, and the squeaking sound of zayns stomach twisting) “-we were thinking of celebrating with harrys friend nick.”

niall shruggs. “yeah, okay. maybe we’ll all gather up,” he says, eyes still sparkling and light at the idea of a party.

///

louis is right there, close enough to touch but thinking of somebody else. they're walking down the wet streets of holmes chapel. half a year ago, this — louis' flesh invading zayns air — would have been enough, honestly. but what are we humans without our greed?  
looking over at him it’s like zayn's smoking on a cigarette, and he can feel my lungs filling with the thick smoke, but instead of getting intoxiated he can only, one by one, count the lights reflected on the rainy street — can only, with a chocking pain, feel the cells in his lungs turn to dust.

the first of january, zayn is hungover. he’s lying on top of louis kind of, their limbs twisted again like they haven’t been since, what, five months ago? zayn sleepily and still a bit drunkly thinks of them as a tree grown together and he feels some comfort between all the anxiety, in that he’s a tree with roots and leaves and no feelings and no heart. there’s that guilty and almost unlawful feeling in his gut you get, when someone’s asleep and you're trying not to watch them. when your bodies are tangled up and you burn like a flame on the feeling of their skin against yours, and you know that when they wake up they’ll pull away, because it was just an in-your-sleep-thing. zayns head is pounding and he decides to go back to sleep, but he tells his body again and again before he drifts off, to savour the feeling of this inside his bones for cold nights.

the winter isn’t over yet.

 

“did you guys have fun?” harry asks later, voice all raspy and mature, in the mid-day sun of grimes citchen. 

“yeah, yeah,” niall says, smiling at the other boy, braces seeming to be happy and glittering too. “was a laugh."

///

zayn is standing in the shower when danny calls. he's letting water fill his open mouth and pour over as if he is a part of a beautiful waterfall. he can't sing with his mouth full of water, wich is a pity, but the drops falling heavily and consistent on him sound - well, not quiet, but not like noise. he's feeling peaceful, non-human and non-heartbroken.

it's days like these he doesnt really miss being home in bradford with all the sisters and their thick black hairs everywhere.

him and his shower.

the phone keeps ringing, so finally he steps out of the steamy bathroom and answers the phone. 

"zayn?" dannys voice says on the other end, and it's an completely un-louis-y way zayn sighs  _mate_ into the speaker.

"'s been too long," danny breathes, and zayn smiles broadly. yes. "how've you been?" the other boy asks, ever so functional. 

"good." zayn says, runs a hand through his wet hair. he looks at his rolling stones and the beatles posters haning on the other end of the room. the men's youngers selves seem to be staring at him, saying  _tell the truth._

"well," he starts, just as danny says something on the other end of the line. "well, not just good," he admits, voice scrapy and honest, but not weak. not really.

"really?"

"yeah, with louis and all." 

he wonders if he sounds like a teenage girl. letting a crush consume him into miserability.

"with louis and all," danny repeats through the knastering phone line. sounds so far away with him saying it, like it's two people in a book he's talking about, not zayn and louis and zayns actual life. 

"you should shag some _birds,_ man," danny says then, laughing, and as zayn realises that it's the most honest advice he's gotten in a good while, a laugh bubbles through his throat too. a strange, hoarse laugh, but it's true what his friend is saying. 

"yeah," he agrees.

it's been the worst january in a long time, and he needs a good one night stand.

///

the train up to bradford takes about an hour from macclesfield. before zayn falls asleep he passes holmes chapel, the market where harry stands from spring to autumn selling fruit. bananas and apples and pears. 

oh and oranges, harry loves oranges, zayn spits in his mind cynicly, and then he wonders if he could ever fall in love with harry.

because, he does fall in love all the time, on the train and on airplanes. it's a lovely buisness. it happens quickly and passionatly and quiet. painless. without the gut and blood and gore. feels like the wind blowing through his dry bones, the way it’s gone like the sudden breeze, away to someone else, never again. (but he still remember how it feels when it hits your bare skin.) there are boys he thinks he’ll remember ‘til he grows old and grey. there’s something nice and innocent and secure, about knowing so little about someone and building a dream on what you see. not knowing the way they look when they’re laughing or when they’re smoking or when they’re just waking up. he fell hard for the one on the train to his grandmas old house many summers ago. see, you remember just a few things: black hair and a little sister. the way zayn kept closing his eyes in his seat and imagining kissing him in the train toilet stalls. he knows enough to fill a blank page about the lonely one on the plane home from barcelona. pretentious and terribly beautiul. silky ash blonde curls and softly carved glasses. was reading a book about jimi henrix. he thinks alot during the ride— about touching them and about how his upper lip looks when he's quiet. about the way they smell. about what sort of music they’re listening to. about where they’re heading — where they’ve been. however, it’s nice to not know. he still wonders where the boy on the flight back from london lives, (the one who had his phone on even though the flight attendant told him to shut it off and who looked at zayn atleast half as many times as zayn looked at him) and it’s alright that it could be citys, hell, countries away, or could be down a few streets from him. see, that’s the glory in falling in love with minutes and soft mouths and hunching shoulders. it doesn’t get into your bloodstream. falling in love on the bus is better than in your group of friends or in your french class. it’s withdrawn and quiet, not like an aching, thumping pulse in your stomach. you’re constantly moving. it’s easy. it’s better. it’s like feeling as if you’ve read the whole book by looking at the back of it and not even feeling the need to open it. allthough you do feel the need. it’s just— it passes. like the wind, zayn thinks. skin skin skin. painless.

 he thinks about harry again, and realises that he dosn't know the boy very well. can state the facts like that he's nineteen and has curly hair and blue or maybe green eyes, that he lokes oranges and the russian novel _lolita._ that he owns alot of white t-shirts that he leaves in louis' apartmeny and that he as a big smile.

(haungingly big, zayn thinks sometimes. worries somewhere in the back of his mind that harry'll swallow louis whole and never burp him out.)

there's nothing bad about harry, really, exept for the obvious louis part. zayn wonders if maybe some other year, in some other world, they'd love instead of hate eachother. if zayn'd feel sweaty beneeth those warm eyes. somewhere harrys long fruit-tree arms could wrap around zayn goodbye the morning after a new-years-party, and zayn wouldn't feel the need to bite. 

that's a different world, though. this is the one on a train to bradford in february with the dark, swollen cheshire hills passing by outside - the one where zayn loves louis.

///

clubbing with danny and ant is nothing like tow years ago, nineteen and woith fireworks still in zayns legs. _before loving louis,_ he thinks helplessly. before louis' sugarlaugh made him want to bend apart his own ribs and play sad songs on his nerv-strings like on a harp.

all the flashing coolours seem mellancholic after this whole year of yearning hugs and painful mornings. his head has seemed to be a chroncial mess of fuzzy love.

but he's drunk and feeling nothing and his hands are touching everything in the room. he's stroking the velvet sofa that doesn't remind him at all of harry's stupid clothes, and there are girls everywhere, throwing themselves at him, and he's touching them too.

it feels good to press his fingers across their backs and feel the solid bone and the bass of the music throught their thumping bodies.

///

liam and danielle and zayn are laying fully clothed on their big bed, cushions on the floor and liam reading parts of louis’ book. “’s actually a great book,” he says, touches danielles thigh and it looks primal and secure. his hands are big but her legs are strong, and they’re good for each other, zayn thinks to himself. he’s never been into that kind of scarred, mutual hurting kind of love. he’s never liked the way louis is breaking his bones to fill them up with the feeling of harry. even thought if feels a little hypocrictial to think that.

“listen, this is the best part of the whole bloody book,” liam says enthusiastically, dragging his timber fingers along danielles jeans-cledd leg. 

“okay, read it then,” she says, sighing deeply, knowing this part almost by mind after having liam read it for her so often.

_“-and it struck me then, what a difference there was, between the way i loved her and the way she loved me.-”_ liam starts, and zayn breathes out heavily, soundless. like he’s being caught. he remembers this part. 

_“-i had devoted these past months to thinking about her, mindlessly, as if this infatuation was a train with a schedule, coming and taking me with it. she was a lovely girl, she was. had that sly smile, perversely twisted but quietly and unblushingly beautiful like a roe deer.-“_

liam is talking louder now, and quicker. the words are echoing out from his throat and bumping around in the room as buzzing wasps, stinging everybodys skin. _“-she looked at me with liking, but when i looked a her, there was no definite word for what i felt, nothing like adoration or admiration. the word love lay on my tongue like a bitter caramel. the word love didn’t taste like a drug the way she made me feel high on fairy-tale coloured fumes. the word love,-”_ liam contunies, _“-is something splattered on birthday cards and spitted out through ugly mouths so often i felt there needed to be a new word invented. could name it after her, i thought, and i many times imagined finding a new flower or a new moon and naming it after her too. instead of a birthday card or a kiss._

_during these months i thought far too many times about her mouth. (it worried me she might feel it, like a ghost on her lips; my mind.) i thought about how lovely mouths are, and how much they are universes of their own. hers was an universe bright and deep, the best one my bleeding mind could imagine. hers was the universe where i could love her, and she could love me back.”_

zayn rolls over onto his stomach, tries smudging out the firery feeling in his chest. “yeah,” he laughs un-happily, “the kid’s a fucking genius.”

“yeah,” liam and danielle agree kindly, but what they don’t understand is the way louis has described how zayn feels without feeling it.

///

 


End file.
